Sadly we weren’t able to head over to Essen SPIEL 2013 this year but it’s one of, if not the biggest, events in Europe surrounding board games, card games and miniature war games. There are however plenty of folk who were able to head over and Darker Days Radio managed to get plenty of pictures of who was there…

As well as that we get a closer look at some of the Mars Attacks miniatures from Mantic Games. I do like how brightly coloured these miniatures are, does that make me far too easily swayed by shiny syndrome?

As well as all the miniatures game there are also games that use miniatures for their board games too. Above you can see some very nice shots of Zombicide and Mice & Mystics. Both of these are pretty massive games and well worth taking another look at I must say.

“Leaders looks like Risk. But with all the elements of Civ, and pretty much any other RTS, and even Vampire the Eternal Struggle. While the game board shows where forces are distributed, the tablet manages diplomacy (and secret treaties), espionage and spying and assassinations (in a manner that it means you know someone has killed, stolen and destroyed your stuff, but you don’t know who), and the management of tech trees. It really looks great, has a great, slick looking app, and really takes advantage of mobile tech to enhance the game, not just act as a middle man for the dice. It makes a game like Civ, or and RTS, the type of thing you can play on the table top.”

…and that sounds very cool indeed.

As well as that there was a good look at Cthulhu Wars and Ashes: Dark Side of the Moon, both games we’d taken a look at over the past few months in the news flow. Both are very interesting looking games and if you remember the way that Ashes went together, in an almost modular style, then you might want to give that one another look.

Of course this isn’t everything that happened at SPIEL but for that you’ll have to head over and check out the rest of his article listed HERE. He has plenty of great looking pictures and lots of other posts too.

See what you think and if you were able to make it to SPIEL let us know your thoughts on the event and the games below in the comments.